


The Future's So Bright

by December21st



Category: Castle
Genre: Castleland, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:23:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/December21st/pseuds/December21st
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The future's getting closer every day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future's So Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Response to the challenge "Mother Knows Best" at LiveJournal's Castleland. The challenge was to write a short fic from the perspective of Martha Rodgers or Johanna Beckett. Written in 2011.

It's a funny thing, being dead.

There is so much that cannot be explained, not with words or pictures or anything that can be understood by the living. But you can still watch your loved ones, if you're willing to make the effort. You can see their past, their present, and their futures. Not just one future, as though his or her fate is immutable as stone, but all possible futures; a complex tapestry of what might be. Some futures are the merest shimmer of a thread, while others strong and bright, fully formed pictures of someday. The one thing we can never do is change anything. That is left to the living.

I watched my family so carefully after I died. Jim, who loved me so much that he fell into the bottom of a bottle of Scotch and took five years and Katie's unswerving devotion to crawl out. And Katie, my darling little girl, so grown up now.

I see the future where she devotes her entire life to her job. Criminals learn to fear her, or respect her, or both. She raises in the ranks and becomes a leader, not quite a politician, but someone of the people nonetheless. And when she goes home to an empty apartment, and feels just a little lonely every now and then, she doesn't mind. Much.

I see the future where she finds a guy (F.B.I. agent, policeman, doctor, whatever) that's good enough, more or less. Always a decent guy . Sometimes it works out; usually it doesn't. Sometimes that's his fault; more often than not it's hers. Her heart knows something's missing. The children that might be are never a solution, but it doesn't keep her from loving them completely.

I see the future where she's shot to death in a back alley by a drug dealer named Lulu Tchaikovsky.

I see the future where she falls in love with Richard Castle, and he with her. And once they finally, finally have the courage to admit it to each other after three years, or five, or ten (depending), they are _magnificent_ together. And that's the future that's getting stronger with every passing day. I see it so clearly. If only she could.


End file.
